


The Flame

by she_wants_the_art



Category: Ai no Kusabi
Genre: Growing Up, M/M, Young Love, childhood in the Slum, filling in the blanks, their story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 04:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3677424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_wants_the_art/pseuds/she_wants_the_art
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you're sad, read the last line again by itself :)</p></blockquote>





	The Flame

A hot day, full of dead air. The wind didn’t blow, not even a breath. And that was good, because this neighborhood’s citizens and waste both had a certain fruity pungency when the breeze blew wrong.

Riki’s small legs carried him among the full-grown gang members who stood adorned with muscle and metal in the middle of the street. The area where they crowded together served as a makeshift starting and finishing line for their comrades who were on bikes, racing around the block.

“Again!” someone shouted as Riki reached the sidewalk and the bikers came in for the umpteenth time. The results were the same as they’d been for the last hour, but still the losers and the spectators insisted on another try.

Riki watched the next race as well, this time from the other side of the street. Unlike the other boys his age, who often lived in packs, he traveled alone. A tense little scrap of a person; that was Riki. The men from the gangs knew him as “that kid” and alternately bathed him in laughter and angry profanity.

“Boy is destined for something,” they would mock. “Can’t hardly help himself from being better than the rest of us, can he?”

Riki watched them start, stomach growling. He was one of those waifs on the streets who seemed to have sprung up out of the cracks in the cement – there were no hands guiding his shoulders, and he was skinny enough to fit in the spider-web lines in the sidewalk beside 5th Street.

The bikes came in – same winner, same losers. At the speed they were driving, they could have been in Eos by then. But instead they drove around, around the block where the spires of old industry grew cracked out of the crumbling cement.

Riki watched, lip curled. He walked down the street a ways, so that the gang was present only in the form of blurred images passing by too quickly to make out. There was a junked-out bus-stop halfway down the block, and he’d never looked inside it before – maybe there was money behind the benches where small fingers could reach it.

But as he peeked in under the awning, which hung at a forty-five degree angle with the ground, he found the shelter occupied. By a boy about his age – he knew it was a boy, despite the long hair; there was just something about his face. The boy wore his hair untied. His jeans were tight. His shirt was blue, and it showed his stomach.

“You know the buses don’t run here no more,” Riki called in, voice echoing hollowly against the plexiglass. The boy, whose eyes had been looking all around him as if expecting something, broke into laughter.

“Shit, I know that.”

“Just makin’ sure.”

Riki stepped in, short enough that he didn’t have to worry about the awning’s perilous tilt. “What you waitin’ for, if you know the bus ain’t comin’?”

The boy shrugged good-humoredly, smiling again. “Nothing in particular. You want a plum?” His small hand emerged from between his thigh and the musty carpet bag that sat beside him, a clean hand, holding a dark, swollen fruit.

“Shit, what you doin’ with that kind of food?”

“Well, I bought it, didn’t I?”

“… I supposed to believe that?”

“Yeah. And you’re supposed to eat it, too.”

Riki cracked a smile, his killer smile that was only seen so often. Properly harnessed, it could have powered the whole city.

“Then don’t mind if I do.”

The plum was juicy and newly ripe. It dribbled down Riki’s chin as he gnawed on it greedily, getting the pulp between his teeth. He sat beside the boy to eat, or rather, the boy’s musty carpet bag, which on second glance contained a set of clothes and nothing else.

He-of-the-long-hair sat back on the heels of his hands, eyes looking forward rather than all around, as they had been.

“You still waitin’ for that ‘nothing’?” Riki asked, curiosity piqued by the divine mystery of this food-bearing boy.

“Nah. I wasn’t looking for much to begin with.”

“Just someone to give a plum to?” This skeptically, one eyebrow up.

“…Yeah.”

Riki took another bite, continuing to speak with his mouth full. “Well, I’ll be your guy any day of the week.”

The boy laughed again, and Riki noticed it was a deeper laugh than his own. It put a furrow in his brow, but also an odd little twist in his stomach. “Why is that funny?” he challenged, thrown off-guard.

“No reason. Just cuz that’s my name: Guy.”

“Oh. Well, Guy, I’ll be your guy any day of the week.”

Guy looked sideways at Riki, and his eyes were blue, the color of puddles before mud had the chance to sink in. They winked in the light, soft and warm, and Riki felt it all the way down inside, right in the middle of himself. It was the same place he felt street fights and pick-pocketing, but it had never been touched in quite this way before.

“And what’s your name?” Guy was asking.

“Riki.”

“Riki, then” he repeated soundly, as if all were settled. “We have a deal.”

They sat back, watching the bikes go by, and Riki caught himself thinking for a moment that if the bikers had to go round and round, at least every time they circled the block, they passed this boy.  

“How old are you?”

“Eight,” Riki proclaimed. “You?”

“Ten.”

That put Riki out, but he tried to pretend it didn’t. Guy laughed at him. When the sun set and the bikers finally called it a day, the boys left the bus-stop together.

 

They traveled and worked together for several years. Odd jobs and theft.

On the night Riki turned thirteen, Guy took him out to the water tower to see the stars. Even though Guy was leading the way, Riki held his hand firmly on the way there – because Guy was a little skinnier, a little softer than his partner in crime, if not in body then in manner. And Riki felt like such a warm-eyed creature would somehow get devoured in the dark if left alone.

So he held tight, fingers digging half-rings into Guy’s palm. Guy never tried to pull away from Riki, despite the fact that he had older suitors who liked his soon-to-be-sweet-sixteen body. Guy could have had any man he wanted; he had more than a few scribbled-down phone numbers crumpled on the table in his apartment. But he just kept letting some kid hold his hand. Riki, too, had his fair share of admirers, but Guy said to ignore them – any adult interested in someone so young wasn’t the right kind of person.

Generally, Riki wouldn’t heed Guy’s words of caution. But it wasn’t like he had time to go out with other guys anyway – he had to be there, holding Guy’s hand.

Riki had never been to the water tower before, though Guy went often. The younger saw no significance in the stars. He could see the stars from anywhere – he would see the stars when he got where he was going. The Slum was not the place to stop and enjoy the view.

But Guy insisted, said they should go, said Riki should appreciate the life he had every now and then.

Riki looked sideways at Guy. Guy had taken to wearing his hair in a ponytail, pulled back so his strong eyebrows stood out on his face. His lips were soft and his fingers were shut nice and tight around Riki’s own. Mission accomplished; could he go home, now?

But they had already reached the water tower and Guy was climbing the ladder, looking back to make sure Riki followed.

The stars were something to appreciate, indeed. Riki imagined they would look even better closer up, when he got to higher places. For the moment, he was on the top of the grungy water tower with Guy in his worn-out clothes.

“Sit down,” Guy said, and when Riki reluctantly lowered the seat of his pants onto the cold, dirty metal, he got a warm, muscular arm wrapped around his shoulder for the effort.

“The Flame is out tonight,” Guy commented mildly, pointing with his finger in front of Riki’s eyes so Riki could follow the fire-like spikes meant to grow between four stars.

“Whoever came up with that name was trippin’.”

Guy chuckled. “Probably.”

Riki leaned in because Guy smelled good, fresh and mildly astringent with just a hint of salt.

“I’m going up there,” Riki stated, saying all the letters for once, eyes fixed on the light beyond.

“Mm.”

“No, really.”

“I believe you.”

And because Guy was always there, because Guy gave him a plum once, because Guy’s eyes were clear, Riki kissed him. It was a simple, just-turned-thirteen kind of kiss. His first.

Guy’s eyes were wrinkled at the corners and wide open, doing all the grinning his mouth couldn’t do. When their lips parted, just a little bit wet, Guy didn’t say anything; Riki didn’t either. They kissed one more time.

 

Riki didn’t know at the time, what that night was, but would think of it later, on a rainy walk home at the age of eighteen from a bar where he’d wasted his money. He knew that Guy would be worried when he heard about the drinking, but that he wouldn’t say anything about it, would purse his lips and let it pass.

Naturally, there had been some good times after that night on the water tower; it was a year later that Riki and Guy had first made love, and that Bison had become successful. Riki had had a few passing encounters with other men to repay debts, but the number of those encounters had not begun to rival the number of nights he’d spent with his partner.

Then came his illusion of an opportunity. Iason Mink. Mimea, An eventual return to all the wrong hand-and-foot-holds, a life of slipping down.

“Shit … Shit … Shit … Shit …”

Riki trudged forward, splashing, then running, and running faster. At some point he’d let go of the hand he always held in the dark, and then come to fear that he himself would be devoured.

Feeling the beginnings of panic, Riki stopped running and let himself soak, tried to breathe.

“That night, that was the highest place,” he enunciated to himself when the truth etched out on his eyelids. He opened his eyes and spoke looking at the puddles. “You idiot … _Fuck_ …”

His head stayed down for a long, long, time. After what felt like years, it turned up to face the sky, looking for a sign.

 

The Flame wasn’t out.

 

 

           

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're sad, read the last line again by itself :)


End file.
